The increasing integration of LSIs has led to finer and finer circuit line widths of semiconductor devices. An approach employed to form desired circuit patterns on semiconductor devices uses a step-and-repeat exposure system to reduce and transfer, onto a wafer, a high-precision master pattern (also called a mask, or a reticle particularly when used in a stepper or scanner) formed on a piece of quartz. The high-precision original pattern is written with an electron beam writing apparatus by use of a so-called electron beam lithography technique.
Processing, such as figure dividing and format conversion, suitable for an electron beam writing apparatus is performed on design data (CAD data) outside the writing apparatus (in an external apparatus), and writing data based on the format for the writing apparatus is generated. The writing data is transferred/input to the writing apparatus, and is subjected to a data registration process including multiple stages of processing, such as format check and calculation of the shot density.
The design data and the writing data include multiple pieces of chip data and layout data. The pieces of chip data include information such as the chip configurations. The layout data includes information such as the positions at which the chips are disposed. The chip data is divided into multiple frames. The frames are subjected, in frame-basis pipeline processing, to a data conversion process in the external apparatus and a data registration process in the writing apparatus, achieving improvement in the processing speed.
In the related art, writing data is registered (input) in a writing apparatus on a layout basis. After an external apparatus completes processing on all of the chip data and the layout data, the writing apparatus starts a data registration process. Therefore, it is difficult to reduce the TAT (Turn Around Time) of the writing process.